


Wherewithal

by raffinit



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M, but more of thoughts about these idiots, sex later, surprise! baby fic, there's a lot of humming and hawing about what they are and how it works and i don't know okay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-06
Updated: 2016-03-11
Packaged: 2018-04-30 07:19:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 11,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5155124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raffinit/pseuds/raffinit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is, to them, like a ghost. There, and then not, an endless cycle of rediscovery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea how to write Max and Furiosa or anyone in this universe, but by god I'm going to try. There seems to be a running trend in the fandom where Max and Furiosa wash each other and fuck and I decided to grab onto that V8 and fucking fang because these idiots have ripped my soul to shreds and laughed as they fucked on it and they deserve to be hAPPY goddamn it

He is, to them, like a ghost. There, and then not, an endless cycle of rediscovery. 

He's come back three times.

The first time, he’s not even sure if it is the same Citadel he left. So much is - different. Not entirely bad; not at all. There is green and water, and no War Boy bleached white screaming for Valhalla and chanting the name of a pseudo-god.

Instead, there is green.

He has been gone 74 days.

When the War Boys come out to meet him halfway, Toast is with them. She’s stronger than when he last saw her, surer - she stares at him with the same hardness and certainty that he had seen in Furiosa; the same make of a warrior.

“So,” she says, and the sound of it is sharp in his ears from endless silence and whispering ghosts. “You’re back.”

“Mm.” He holds out a bag of something with grimy and desert-crusted hands - “seeds,” he mumbles. “For the green.”

When she brings him to the Imperator, he is relieved to see her standing, and - well, breathing. There is no blood dried thick on her face, down the ridge of her brow and her eye swollen shut from a beating he hadn’t been quick enough to stop . There is no rasping, grating, aching sound of each breath collapsing itself inside her; no smell of her blood in his nose, smeared across his skin with the fading warmth of her breath.

She’s alive, and somehow the veins in his arm twitch as if they remember.

“You look.” He moves his hand helplessly. “Better.” _Alive_. “Breathing.”

Furiosa smirks. “Thanks to you.”

She moves while he is still too besotted to, and when she reaches up to curl her fingers into his hair, he feels his eyes flutter shut and his forehead tilt readily.

He smells of sweat and grime and is ashamed, but he breathes her in, reaches around and twines his fingers through the soft bristle brush of her hair against his palm. She is realized in front of him, an apparition turned to life. There seems, to Max, to be a hazy atmosphere lingering around her; and so when he moves to touch the back of her neck, and her velvet-soft skin thrums beneath his fingers, he moves through honey, through a dream.

“Fool,” she says, almost under her breath, and then her eyes are soft on his face. “You’ve come back.”

“Mm. A few days.”

She’s smiling at him wider than he thought capable, and he doesn't know what to do with himself when he sees the dimple pop in her cheek. “That’s enough.”

\------

She sits with him as he eats, first. Watched amused and endeared somehow in the way he devours everything they put in front of him. Chews right through the fibrous stalks of the cabbage grown in the greenhouse and doesn’t flinch. The girls have come by to see him, eager in their own way to hear stories and adventures and to share their own about the growth and shift of the Citadel under their guidance.

Even Cheedo speaks, shyly, and asks him if he’s missed them.

He stares at his plate, grumbles something in his throat. Clears it, under the guise of thirst and gulps his water down under the watchful eyes of the Wives. He sees Toast’s eyes narrow at him over the lip of the cup, and Max rolls his eyes.

“Yes,” he sighs at last, and when Cheedo smile beatifically at him, he can’t find it in himself to be annoyed.

“Come on, you brute.” He looks up, blinking those ridiculous wide eyes of his and grunting something like confusion as Furiosa grabs his arm.

“You need a bath,” she says. “You stink like all of the War Boys rolled together in piss.”

The Wives giggle behind them, loping and skipping around Furiosa and watching Max with keen, sparkling eyes.

“Do you ever clean when you're driving?” the Dag asks. “It’s not half as bad as when you stank like rotted mother’s milk.”

“And sweat,” Toast adds, smirking. “And blood and the man-stink.”

“Miss Giddy used to call it the musk of a man,” Dag says thoughtfully, rubbing a hand over her rounded belly. “It's not a very pleasant smell.”

“He probably rolled in the sand to bathe,” Capable hums. “A sand bath. Like the lizards.”

He rumbles almost indignantly. There's too much talking; too many voices at once, and over them -

“ _Run, Pa_!”

He shakes his head like a dog clearing water from his ears and feels the grip of Furiosa’s hand over his wrist. It’s easy to reach out, so he does, and he squeezes.

Furiosa pauses, looks at their hands. Her blue eyes snap to the Wives. “Girls!” she chides them sharply. All but Toast look contrite in their own way; Capable staring calmly back at the Imperator until Furiosa pulls Max to her.

“Let him catch his breath,” she tells them, and the Dag and Cheedo shuffle about.

“Can we show him the gardens after?”

Furiosa sighs inwardly, but she glances at Max. Patient, unassuming; she watches him shift and shuffle on his feet, as he always does - perhaps this time it’s the brace, though - and the way his eyes dart from Wife to Wife, his lips twitching and pursing.

Eventually he grumbles an “mm” that is neither here nor there, but it seems to satisfy the Wives.

He feels Furiosa tug at his wrist again. “Come on, fool. You need to get clean.”

\------

Water in such an abundance is alarming to him; a luxury he is suspicious of, but so many days away from even the smell of it - he cups it into his hands, cool and precious, and gulps.

“You can have more later,” Furiosa says. “This is for cleaning.”

He swallows another mouthful and hums, watches almost perplexed at the way his wet hands smear dirt and mud across his clothes again. It’s not making it any prettier or cleaner, but Furiosa just looks at him almost indulgently and gestures for his clothes.

“C’mon,” she says, crooking her metal arm at him. “Strip.”

There isn’t much to argue about - he only looks at her shyly a moment, and then he sheds his layers of desert-heavy clothing. Each piece of him sheds like skin, dry and tough and heavy, and when he’s bare he slips quietly into the pool of water, hissing at the bite.

“Hmm.” He looks up - Furiosa is frowning. “Nothing. ‘s just I thought they’d have warmed it up.”

“Mm.” He shrugs, the water is up to his hips at most, so he sinks down until he is submerged to his chin. “‘s fine. This is good.”

She makes some sound of amusement and exasperation, rolls her eyes up at the ceiling. His hand snaps out of the water almost before he realizes - catches something dry and soft and smelling faintly of skin and dust and something not quite unpleasant.

He grunts in question.

“Scrub,” she supplies, and he hears the slide of her footsteps to him. He looks up again, and she’s holding out something - his eyebrows disappear into his hairline.

“Soap.”’

She nods, pleased. “Dag figured it out. Can’t say I wanna wrap my head around how, or with what, but it smells good.”

He takes the bar, weighs it tentatively in his hands, bringing it to his nose. It wafts like something earthy, or -

“Grass?” He looks up at her, bewildered.

Furiosa shrugs. “Cheedo said she likes the smell of it when the War Boys trim the green. It works.” She holds out a hand for it impatiently. “Give.” Her feet are bare, he realizes; her pants rolled up high enough to keep dry as she lowers them into the water, submerged to the knees. He drifts without realizing, between them.

He relinquishes it readily and Furiosa dunks it into the water and then grasps the top of his head. Max’s eyes go wide, darting in confusion, and then he feels her tilt him back gently, and he follows. Emerges half-blind with hair and water in his eyes, but he feels her start to scrub the soap into his mangled nest of hair.

“You need a shearing,” she tsks, and Max grunts as her fingers tangle into his mane.

“Ow,” he whines.

He can practically hear her eyes roll. “Road warrior, they say.”

He grumbles something petulant in his throat, but sits steady enough for her liking as she scrubs and washes layers of dirt caked into his skin. It’s almost soothing, except for when her fingers catch in tangles and she sighs, but he is nearly lulled into the waters to sleep. She turns, facing his back, and he feels her fingers still over his skin, gripping on his shoulder.

“Mm -?”

Her fingers ghost the skin of his back. Oh. “Hmm.” He shifts, and Furiosa’s fingers release him almost apologetically. “‘s okay,” he grunts, staring at the murky brown water dripping from his beard into the blue, rippling into nothingness. “Dunno what it says, anyway.”

“It’s upside down,” she tells him quietly. “You wanna know?” she asks, and he shrugs.

She pushes him forwards slightly, urges him to bend enough for her to tilt her head and read the upside-down report. “Day 12,045,” she read steadily. “Height: Ten hands, one hundred and eighty pounds.” Her fingers trace from the bottom up, and Max tries his damndest to quell the shudder that rides up his spine.

“No name, no lumps, no bumps. Full life, clear. Two good eyes - kind of.” She smiles wryly to herself. He seems to know. “No busted limbs, piss okay.” She grins here, and Max feels something inside him almost blush. “Genitals intact.” She enunciates the words carefully, deliberately, and he grunts at her suspiciously. She pats his arm, something like a laugh in her words when she speaks again. “That’s good to know.”

He grumbles at her, and she takes pity.

“Want me to keep going?” she asks, and he nods jerkily at her. His hands work to clean the rest of his body, scrubbing and rubbing until the gathered dirt sheds from him. “Multiple scars,” she recites. “Heals fast, O-plus, hi-octane.”

She goes quiet.

“Universal donor,” she murmurs. Suddenly he feels exposed; more exposed than he could be, naked, wet, caked in filth and dirt and grizzled more like an animal than human. He shifts in the water, sinks lower into the lapping waves.

“I -.” He licks his lips, turns in the water to face her. There’s something in Furiosa’s face again - he’d seen it on the road, he’d seen it on the night she offered him a place with them. It’s not something he’s ever wanted to put a word not, not anything he himself would’ve liked anyone to be able to read on his own face, but he knows her, somehow. Knows the curve and lift and arch of her face even if he’d only spent - what, three days? with her?

Three days and a good amount of fire and blood.

Mostly blood.

“Y’know,” she says, and whatever it was in her face is replaced with something like a shy affection; a softness amidst the hard lines that takes years off her face. “I never really did get to thank you for saving my life.”

He shrugs his shoulders again, grunts dismissively. “Saved my ass plenty times too,” he tells her. “Woulda been dead somewhere in the sand ‘f it weren’t for you.”

She arches a brow at him, mouth curved. “Well, guess we can call it even, then.”

He hums, and then he lifts his hands out of the water, the melting, murky bar of soap in hand.

“Can’t reach my back,” he says gruffly. “Do mine, do yours?”

Furiosa’s brow arches higher, and she looks at him somewhere between amusement and wariness. “Are you asking me to join you?”

He shrugs, wades in the shallow waters almost idly. “‘Join me, don’t join me. ‘m askin’ for a favor.”

Her hand reaches for the soap, and as her fingers curl around the slipper bar, he feels them brush against the skin of his palm. “And what do I get in return for this...favor?” she asks carefully, her eyes pressing deep into the lines of his face, the guarded walls of his own.

Max licks his lips, clears away the dust and grit that cling to the walls of his throat, but his words come out as grating and thick as iron on stone. “Whatever you want.”

 

 


	2. break

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You're good with your hands."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> short update is short because children are infectious and they are even more so when they are confined in a small air conditioned space with you.
> 
> you'll just have to wait for the sexy a little while longer ahahhaha ow i hurt

“You’ll help with the cars.”

Max blinks. “Mm?”

Furiosa smirks at him, her metal arm grasping his shoulder. He drifts, again, readily. “You said anything I want. The black thumbs have been having a hard time trying to salvage parts from the war rig and the scraps from the cars they lost.” She doesn’t need to say much else for it; he’d seen the bits and pieces in the garage on the way up.

He bobs his head thoughtfully. “Mm. ‘s fair.” They stare at each other again, as they always seem to do - it’s easier, he thinks. He’s not good with words, never has been, never will be; Furiosa doesn’t talk so much as she commands. In the quiet, she speaks.

“Is it?” she asks him. “Fair.”

There.

He hums, and when he opens his mouth to speak again, he sees the track of Furiosa’s eyes on his lips. “‘s fair if you say it is.” He wades in the water, sinks again low enough until the edges of his lips slip just under the surface, eyes steady on Furiosa’s face.

At this point, he is virtually knelt by her legs - between them, really, but that is semantics and who has the time to think about semantics in their world -, staring into her face as if he knows exactly what she’s thinking. That he sees right through her Imperator practicality, but it’s not the same. Not the same way that the other War Boys used to (and still do, sometimes) look at her and see _woman_ , and therefore _Daddy knows best_ and therefore _they take what they want_ because woman means _weak_.

He sees it, he knows it. He understands something about the indecisions of wants and needs and impracticality of attachment in a world that hurts.

But still, he is here. Waiting for her word.

Like an obedient, wet, shaggy dog.

(She remembers dogs. Max is a dog’s name, she decides. It’s a loyal name.)

The waters lap over his shoulders, burnished brown and burnt so dark she knows he’s been wandering shirtless some days. His beard is longer than she’d like, more than scruff; more hair she’s ever seen on a man. She reaches to it thoughtlessly, slips her flesh-hand over his chin, feels the bristle brush of it over her fingertips, the grit of sand caught there.

His eyes slide shut, and he leans into her touch like a starved Wretched to the waters.

“You plan on staying?” she whispers to him, and Max’s eyes slip to her face slowly - his lashes are long, too sweet, like his lips, too much of a beauty in the face of a man so wild.

And yet, fitting.

He hums. “Few days,” he repeats. “I don’t - can’t stay.”

She nods the same she did in the desert; without the blanket around her shoulders, without the offer of home and a fully-loaded bike. The look in her eyes.

“You’re good with your hands,” she says, and Max peers into her face with a knowing, eager hunger. “Show me.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ha

> _ [They never speak of it; the desperate way their lips had met - parched and rough on soft and firm, teeth and tongue and greedy hands that pull and shove and leave them with more bruises, more scars that they’ll run their fingers over and remember again, each conquest. The harsh, frantic breaths and groans and pants as he pushed and pulled and she pulled and pushed and they moved together again. Seamless, a machine with well-oiled parts, the thunder-grumble of a V8 rattling in his chest, into her as their hips slapped and slammed and molded together with endless need.  _
> 
> _ He never asks her about the stutter in her throat when he pushes in deep; bottoms out and holds inside her, deep, pulsing,  blazing , and she’ll never ask him about the way he touches her face, the way his nose bumps against hers, or the guttural way his voice hitches on her name in four syllables and a groan.  _
> 
> _ The first time she’s ever heard him speak her name, it is then. ] _

 

He stays about three days. For three days, he never leaves Furiosa’s side. 

\--

The second time, he comes back bleeding with a broken leg brace. 

They haul him half-conscious back through the gates, screaming for the healer. Madera is an older crone; a former Wretched, a healer of the broken and condemned. War Boys clamor over him, screaming things he can only half understand -  _ Imperator! Get the Imperator! Furiosa! Furiosa!  _

It’s been Angharad that comes to him lately; sharp and hissing and broken with a baby stiff and blue in her arms. Voices all at once - Sprog, Jessie, Furiosa - “ _ You’re better off dead _ ,” Angharad’s baby wails an ugly, dead sound.  _ “You could’ve stopped it. You could’ve saved us. You killed us!” _

_ Killed us! _

“ - almost killed us! He broke Hazard’s nose!” Max groans, searches for the voice again. One of the Wives - the Sisters - one of Furiosa’s girls. The fiery one, that one - Toast, yes, Toast. He remembers the spite in her eyes when he’d left. 

“He’s  _ hurt _ ! Just go get her! Tell her we’re taking him down to Madera!”

“He shouldn’t have left! Let the smeg bleed out and die, for all I care!”

“Toast, just  _ go _ !” 

He drifts in and out of wakefulness, drowning inside the sounds of the voices and winds and revving engines, and Capable is screaming at him, slapping him across the face.

“Max! Max, can you hear me?” She slaps him again, and he grunts, growls at her as he opens a sand-caked eye.

“Ow,” he says, and then he is out. 

\--

When he wakes, he is somewhere in the medical, his leg is bound in a clean, white brace, and his clothes gone somewhere. He look down at the shift on his body in disgust, and somewhere in the room, he hears whispering.

“ _ \- you think he’ll sleep in her room again?” _

“ _ He’s hurt, Dag. He wouldn’t be able to - shift gears with Furiosa like this. _ ”

“ _ Shift gears?? You’ve been spendin’ too much time down with the black thumbs, Cheedo - _ ”

“ _ They’re nice to me. They teach me new things! _ ”

“ _ Hush! He’s waking up! _ ” 

He grunts, and then groans when he sees Cheedo and the Dag there. “Mm.” He scrubs his hand over his face. “My clothes.”

“Having a good washing like they need,” the Dag provides, and Cheedo moves to him shyly, touches his face with gentle, slender fingers and prods at wounds and bruises until he grunts and jerks his face away again. The Dag’s belly is rounder, curved elegantly from her lanky frame, and he thinks that the pregnancy has done good things for her. 

“Do you hurt?” Cheedo asks quietly, and Max hums a negative. He lets her fuss and prod at his face for an exchange of water, which the Dag brings him in a bowl carved from wood and steel. “You’ll need a few days before you can get your brace back,” Cheedo says. “The black thumbs are fixing it for you.”

“Won’t be able to hobble around much yet, either,” the Dag tells him. “Found you with your brace stuck half in your knee.”

Ah. That explains the twinging. “Mm.” He looks restlessly at the door. His heart beats a frantic drum in his chest - enclosed spaces. The Citadel. He remembers these rooms. 

He feels a gentle hand on his arm. 

“She’s gone for a trade,” Cheedo tells him, a small, knowing smile on her lips. “She’ll be back next dawn.”

He stares at the threads of his shift for a long moment. “Mm.” He nods, and lays back down.

He sleeps. Somewhere in his waking nightmares, he dreams of sandstorms and Buzzards and somehow the soft, feather caress of her lips on his. 


	4. return

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max returns.

The third time.

He’s standing, not bleeding, and he brings them trinkets again.

Seeds, and bullets, and somehow - guzzoline.

Furiosa is there to greet him when he comes.

The last was some 82 days, give or take; the last he saw the Citadel. He had brought them seeds, plants and roots from things long dead, and the Sisters had crowded around him for stories of his adventures. At night, he had dined with them and tasted the product of their gardens; beans and tomatoes, oddly enough. They are succulent on his tongue, and he feels almost ashamed for the way the Sisters ply him with it to take.

Furiosa had said nothing, only watched from beside him, smiling to herself. He had blushed under her gaze, and mumbled a low and grating thanks to the Sisters, and the Vuvalini.

He spent the night in her room.

In the morning he had spent the better part of it between her legs again, worshipping her thighs and skin and cleaning up the mess they'd made together. They washed together and dressed, and Furiosa helped with his brace, and he helped with her arm.

She let him go, and he had left wishing somehow that he had the strength to stay.

He comes back the fourth time. Two hundred and forty-five days later. They welcome him with hoots and hollers and shouts about Furiosa’s mad man returning and he is immensely confused. Toast doesn't greet him with a smile this time. He doesn't think he expected her to. "She'll be glad to see you."

He nods at her through the mop of hair sprouting under his goggles. "Mm."

Everything is new now, different. The working parts are the same, and yet the Wretched are not quite so wretched, and the War Boys are not bones and walking dead with black over their eyes. There is running water spilling from the mouth of the once-mark of Immortan.

He squints up at it, makes a curious sound in his throat.

Toast glances upwards. “We wrecked it,” she says, by way of explanation. “Scratched and yanked that ugly face off like Furiosa did to that _smeg_.”

He nods his approval. “Mm.”

She’s high up on the platform of the greenhouse; plantation and life sprouting around her in green and blue and colors he’s nearly forgotten. Two hundred days.  It’s a wonder how he’s kept track. When they emerge from the lift, she’s standing with her back to them, head bent low to speak with a young War Pup, murmuring quietly as she transfers a seedling into his cupped hands.

“Furiosa,” Toast says, and for some reason she is smirking at Max as she speaks. “Someone’s here for you.”

Max grunts curiously, and as Furiosa turns, his eyes begin to widen on his face.

She’s -

“Oh.”

\----

Max’s dreams are never pleasant. Once (once) he could see a field, and in this field a woman tending the hives of honeybees - little white castle-turrets that poked through the cloverfields and the floating grass. He could see them floating around her as she bent to take the lid off the hive-box, small as dandelion seeds, the sweet scent of the flowers in the air.

It was engulfed in flames in seconds, and his mind, too, a splitting headache that was borne of the extreme dehydration their bodies have adapted. to.

But he still remembers it. This is what seeing Furiosa is like, the woman in the field with the sweet-smelling air. But seeing the curve of her stomach - the soft golden hue of her body, the way she appears oiled like a goddess as the sunlight casts heat onto her shoulders and the fierce curve of her cheek. She is rubbing her fingertips over the frayed edge of her shirt; instead of the pants she’d worn last time he’d seen her, she wears a gauzy skirt tied below the curve of her belly.

She nods at him, her eyes piercingly blue.

“Max.” His name drips from her tongue.

“I - are you...alright?”

“Of course.” She blinks at him as he draws closer; he can hear the soft hum of the rustling leaves around them, an artificial rainforest. The closer she gets to him, the more he feels the twitch in his arm, his leg, his brain. His hands jerk as if to reach for her, but he keeps them to his side with a visible restraint.

Furiosa’s brow arches slightly, her mouth curved in a shadow of a smile. “Are _you_ -?”

He grunts, bobs his head vaguely. “You -” he moves his hands around his middle in some ambiguous imitation of her current condition. “Um.  That.”

She nods. “This.” She lays a hand idly over the large curve of her stomach, and with her metal arm she reaches forwards for him. He nearly falls into her reach; grasps the short bristles of her hair in his hand with an almost shy embrace. Her forehead tilts down to his, the taste of her breath on his skin before he pulls back and stares down intently at her stomach.

"Mine?" His hands bracket the air around her middle.

She guides them down onto her skin gently. "Ours."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the number of chapters this piece has keeps increasing and I don't know why. also I don't know if the days are accurate, but let's say he's been away long enough for her to show


	5. space

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hundreds of days is a long time.

"Mm. I thought -"

"Thought so too. Madera says it was scar tissue. From the failed births. It all happened too soon after each other."

"Then -"

"Mm."

"...Mm." He watches her turn back to their sprawling garden of green - her new Green Place; not quite as bountiful as the one before, and not filled with Many Mothers, but he feels the warmth of the space around them. The crisp of dioxide-cleansed and oxygen-rich air. It tickles something in the back of his throat, in the corners of his lizard brain. 

Furiosa glances at him, and his feet move him to her without thought. She guides him through the rows of hydroponics and grass, flesh hand touching delicate leaves. “Dag had her baby, you know,” she says. “A girl.”

He hums, reaches out to grasp her elbow and guide her gently down the stairs. The tips of his ears burn at the amused look she shoots him, but he shrugs and keeps his grip loose but present at her elbow. “Name?”

“Lily,” she tells him. “She was born with hair almost white.” 

Max hums. “Healthy?”

Furiosa shrugs. “Healthy as she can be.” They move down the hall easily, Max a bare step behind her as he watches the shift and mold of her shoulders through the gauze of her shirt. The shadow of her brand flashes in moments through the material, and Max feels a faint buzzing sensation bristling on the back of his neck. 

He follows her into the comforts of her quarters; the familiar space and scent of her and the baked warmth of the walls sets gently into his mind. She moves to the workbench and pours a basin for him, and he stands gingerly in the middle of the room, waiting obediently.

“Clean up,” she tells him, and he moves again, without thought. “You smell like a thousand days’ worth of piss and sweat.”

He mumbles something unintelligible to her, and begins to shed the layers of his clothing. It takes a moment to remember what it’s like to wash with an audience, but Furiosa hides none of her appraisal of his naked body as the water turns murky and dark. He glances at her pointedly, grunting as he brushes a hand through his beard, and Furiosa begins to rise from the bed with some effort. 

“No,” he says, and she pauses. “Rest. Tell me where.”

Furiosa points towards her bench of tools. The knife sharpened to a gleam. “I’m not broken, you know.” She sounds both defiant and amused by the way he glances at her belly every so often, the way she knows the cogs in his brain whir and shunt. 

“Mm,” he says agreeably. “Still.”

She smiles at him indulgently and leans back against the bed, her flesh hand rubbing over the ache in her lower back. 

He peers into her face worriedly. “Mm?”

“Just sore,” she waves him away. “It’s not easy carrying someone else inside you.” She motions for him to continue. “We’ll stop by the kitchens after, so you can eat. Stock up.”

His brows pull over his face. “Not leaving.”

Furiosa shrugs, looks away to the window carved into stone that overlooks the main gates of the Citadel. “Not yet, anyway,” she says. “How long will you stay this time?”

He swallows thickly, speaks as if he has eaten only sand for the hundreds of days he was gone. “How - long? Until -?”

“About twenty days. Madera says it might be sooner. She says I'm carrying low already." Her metal hand curls protectively over her stomach, and she looks at him with a steady gleam in her eyes. “You don’t have to stay,” she says slowly, carefully. “Not if you don’t want to. This isn’t your responsibility.”

He looks at her as if she’s sprouted four heads and a pair of horns. “It’s...hard,” he admits, staring at the callused lines of his hands. The weathered cord knotted around his wrist - its twin wrapped around Furiosa’s flesh hand. “Had one. Before.”

She doesn’t ask him, and he says nothing more about it, only pulls his pants on after it occurs to him that he’s still naked and scruffy in the middle of her bedroom. He shears at his hair and beard, and she sits quiet and thoughtful on the bed until the silence makes Max turn to her. 

“You missed a spot,” she says, and he shrugs. She looks at him for a moment; him to her, and they feel the rush of hot air from outside waft through the confines of the room. 

“You thought of names?” he asks. 

Furiosa tilts her head thoughtfully. “A few,” she says, and watches as he moves to her carefully, sets himself on his knees by her feet, and she arches a brow at him. His hands reach for her feet, and his eyes seek the permission that was already given by her silence and the fact that she hasn’t yet kicked him in the face. Her eyes slip shut and she feels a breath pull from her lips as he kneads at her calves. 

“Ooh…”

His hum rumbles against her knee; he kisses there gently. “Swollen ankles,” he says, by way of explanation. He works his hands over the tense muscle, kneading and rubbing and easing his fingers into spots that make Furiosa moan or swear, and he leans his head forward carefully to rest on her thigh.

Her flesh hand weaves its way into his hair instinctively, and he purrs in his chest as she rakes her nails across his scalp. Something inside him aches to speak more, to say  _ I missed you. I missed this. Here. Us.  _ Instead he works her calves until there is a knock at her door. 

“Open,” she call, and Max pulls back to watch the Sisters crowd into the room. It takes a moment for Max to remember them - without the ghost of Angharad whispering spitefully in his ear. Cheedo smiles at him from where she is pressed to Dag, holding a baby as pale as the cloth wrapped around it. It peers at him, and Max looks away. 

“Took you long enough to show your face again,” Dag says, and Capable folds her arms primly from beside her. “Thought we’d have to send a party out to bring your head back for us.”

Cheedo squeezes her arm gently, and Dag shrugs unapologetically. She bounces the baby gently, and peers at Max’s tense face. “This is Lily,” she says, and the baby continues its unnervingly steady gaze into his face. “She can’t hear, but we taught her to speak with her hands.”

“Sign language,” Max croaks, as if pained. “‘s called sign language.” 

Capable clears her throat quietly. “We were just getting ready to sit down for dinner,” she tells them, and the Sisters look expectantly at Furiosa. 

Furiosa runs her fingers through Max’s hair again, and tightens her grip slightly. “We’ll meet you downstairs,” she says, and they nod. From the way they shuffle from the room, Max knows that dinner is always had with Furiosa leading them, and that his presence here is a tentative thing. 

When the door is shut, Furiosa nudges him gently. He moves, and she straightens to her feet. This time she accepts his offered hand to leverage, and she stretches the lines of her neck idly as he fumbles for his shirt and pulls it over his head. “Will you join us for dinner?” she asks. It should’ve been a given, but he knows why she’s asking him. 

“‘f you, um. Have me.” He shrugs with his hands almost helplessly. “Don’t - um. Don’t fit. Here. Not - yet. Haven’t been around.”

Furiosa nods slowly, her eyes steady on his face even as he’s staring at everything but her line of sight. “Just means you’ll have to stay a while. Find your place.” 

She reaches with her flesh hand to him. 

Max hesitates, licking the remnants of sand off his lips. His fingers creak and ache at his side, but he reaches with a tentative spread of his fingers and slips them into hers. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this piece isn't going the way I thought it would :


	6. time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> things escalate very quickly

Her labor begins in the greenhouse. She knows it from the start because the pain is different than other pains she has felt before. Getting shot, whipped, punched, kicked, stabbed, cut; these are different from the pain of labor, which moves from the inside out, from the space below her breasts arching down to her back through her pelvis and deep into the sockets of her hips. Ebbing and flowing like waves; Furiosa walks until she cannot walk any more, and then it is the wives’ turn to attend to her as she has always attended to them. To let her kneel on the white bed, rock on her knees.

She struggles to unclasp the bindings of her metal arm from her body; tugs and rips at it almost frantically. “I don’t want to wear it,” she grits, gasping through a contraction. New life should touch skin, first; human flesh, not machine, not metal and oil and mechanics.

They bring her water. Precious and fresh and life-giving as she, they bring her water.

And the Dag brings her Max.

“Come, fool,” she says, gripping him tight by the arm. His eyes flit to her, narrowed, “tell me if she’s alright.”

“You did it to her, come help her through it,” she coos sharply, and when she slams the door to the Vault open she lets him go. Furiosa is a warrior as much as ever; to her, birth is another battle to fight. To Max it is akin to some kind of emergency, something that requires more action, even if the Wives and the Imperator know there is not much to do for her but to wait and to let her listen to what her body says.

“Furiosa.”

He watches as her fingers go white with the strength from her grip on the footboard of the bed. His hands hover over her - shoulders, neck, shorn hair, flushed cheeks.

He expects her to call him fool. He would deserve it, surely; like the Dag said. He did it to her, didn’t he? But she doesn’t say anything, nothing, except his name, which slips out in a whisper and turns into a soft groan of pain. She is experienced; she knows what she’s doing. The wives draw back and Max stays close to her, kneels on the bed in front of her as if in prayer.

It is a chain of actions he must remember, somewhere, buried deep beneath the rubble of the dreams in his head every night. He places his hand over hers on the end of the bed, his other braced at the elbow of her half-arm to give her as much support - as much leverage as she bears down with the fury of the sun that beats down through the window high above the bed.  

“Come on,” he urges her, his voice soft and gentle through the soft squeak of pain that presses from between her lips. There is a soft, choked gasp, and when her hand returns to its place on the footboard it is slick with blood. He breathes hard now, too; perhaps he is remembering the last time her blood covered his hands, except it’s not the same now, is it? When it is blood to bring forth their child?

Their child.

His hands go over hers again, and her blood on them both, again.

He can feel her body tense, through the tendons in her hands. She is strong, and he knows this, but still he worries when he catches the way she’s getting out of breath, the sweat on her brow, the tears beading in her eyes and the soft whimper at the end of her groan.

“It’s okay,” he says quietly.  

She meets his eyes, and he feels the pulse and engine-rumble of their blood rushing together as one.

Then his hands are the ones to come off the footboard. She leans back, leaving bloody prints on the white sheets, and Max supports the head of his child, of her child, as she lets out a scream, and then he catches the baby in his arms. Blood streaks his skin, and Furiosa’s thighs, and the body of the child as it starts to scream and cry and squall in his hands. He cannot breathe.

He fumbles, terrified of dropping the baby, petrified at the way it kicks and squirms and howls at him. The Wives have crowded over Furiosa, soft, delicate hands and voices touching and stroking and offering words that he cannot to the woman delirious and breathless with blood loss amidst the red sheets.

“What is it?” the Dag asks eagerly, straining to peer between the slippery little form’s legs.

Max reaches for the cleanest scrap of sheets, wraps it around the baby as Capable and Toast support Furiosa upright, touching her shoulder, her neck, her face.

He peeks between the baby’s leg almost fearfully. His head cocks curiously.

“Hmm.”

Toast makes an impatient sound. “Just tell us if it’s a boy or a girl, fool!” Furiosa is braced against her shoulder, and the Imperator is staring expectantly at him as well.

The edges of his mouth twitch, but his brows remain low and uncertain on his face. “Ah - I uh. Dunno if -”

“Oh, for goodness sake -!”

The Dag leans over his shoulder and inspects the baby critically. Her eyes light and she grins so wide he can see the gap of her front teeth. “A boy! Furiosa had a boy!”

“A boy,” he says, watching as the little form in his arms wiggles and snuffles. The boy has quieted now; and he blinks his eyes, and Max is startled. They are blue. Furiosa’s hands, rubbed clean now, take him from Max’s arms and she holds him to her breast, reflexive. He drags his sore knees to the side of the bed, rests on it as he watches the tiny hands curl and uncurl.

“He is your son,” she says.

“A son.” Not a boy, but a son. A strong son; if he is anything like his mother.  

The Wives cheer and squeal and weep; do all these things and more as they summon War Boys and medics and more water.

Max doesn't quite know. He doesn't quite care. His eyes are transfixed on the sight of this small, alien creature suckling noisily at Furiosa’s breast, the weary but amused look on the woman’s face as her son hiccups and belches against her nipple.

“Do you want to hold him?”

He hesitates. She leans forwards; sets the baby in Max’s arms. He can feel her fingers soft on his forearm as she repositions his arms, shows him how to hold carefully, gently. It’s muscle memory he’s tried to forget, and now he can feel it coming back, awkward and stiff, but slowly. He rubs the pads of his fingers over the skin of his son’s neck, so soft, fragile -

“Mm.” He leans down slowly, and rests his forehead so gently on the baby’s. “H’llo.”

The baby burbles at his voice, jerking and snuffling, and around him the Wives are crowding his shoulders, shoving and pushing for a look and a chance to hold the Imperator’s son.

“He has Furiosa’s scowl,” Cheedo says giddily, and Furiosa manages a huff from where Capable is urging her to birth the placenta.

“He’s quite a chunky little babbie, isn’t he?” Dag reaches to touch the baby’s thighs gently, and Max makes an offended grunt, glaring at her. She giggles behind her hands and pets the baby’s fair tuft of hair. “So light, like when Lily was born.”

Max pulls the baby closer to him almost protectively, away from curious and awe-filled prodding. “Mm.”

The Wives ignore the rumbled threat and fawn over the baby. “He’ll probably be as fair,” Capable offers thoughtfully. “His mother and father are fair.” She is dabbing Furiosa’s forehead and offering her sips of water, and when Furiosa leans exhaustedly back onto the pillows, she follows after worriedly. “Furiosa?”

He’s at her side immediately, the baby transferred hurriedly over to the closest pair of arms - Cheedo’s - as he gathers Furiosa in his arms again, rubs the damp skin of her neck beneath his fingers as he braces her off the bed, leans down anxiously.

“Hey.” He grips her shoulder gently, squeezes. “Hey. Hear me?”

She moans, and the color from her face is gone, her lips pressed tightly together as she leans into his touch. He cups her cheek. “Furi.”

The Wives flock around them like anxious, yammering buzzards; touching and asking and sputtering words all at once until Capable orders them back. “She’s lost blood,” she reminds them sharply. “Give her space to breathe.”

Furiosa’s brows pinch together, and her eyes are gleaming and sharp when she opens them onto Max’s face.

“Your son,” she rasps accusingly. “Has a big head.”

 

> (He leaves before their son is a day old. The ghosts come back, and they hold pieces of the baby in their hands and pull him down into the rushing waters of engines and sand and blood.)


	7. respite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> short angsty chapter is short

In his defense, he didn’t  _ leave _ . 

He circled the Citadel; within range to keep in sight, but far enough for the ghosts to stop their whispering. He drives with the tyres screeching for him in ways he cannot. But the fact of the matter is that he is a worthless smeg and a horrible fuck-up and therefore deserving of no defenses whatsoever. 

He had left Furiosa in a bed full of her blood. 

He had left a child so fresh to the world that the cord binding mother to son had not yet finished pulsing with the life Furiosa had given it - given him. 

It was the same gift of life that had tied him to her in those frantic moments in the back of the Gigahorse. 

He pulls the car behind a wall of clay and stone, tumbles out and buries his hands desperately into the brick-red sand. Furiosa’s blood has dried on his skin, caked and dark and precious; Max rubs the sand over his skin, scrubs the memories of her wheezing breath, the pale and gaunt look of determination on her face before their son had slipped into his arms. 

_ Murderer. _

_ Schlanger! _

_ Liar! _

**_Liar!_ **

_ You promised us! _

_ Why didn’t you save us? _

_ You killed the world! _

_ Liar! _

**_Liar!_ **

**_FOOL!_ **

He reels backwards with the force of a V8 ploughing through him, crumbles with a dust of red and earth and sand and the screaming of a thousand ghosts and engines roaring. He presses his hands to his ears, rubs and claws at them until the ache begins to drown out their voices, hears the sound of his name howled in the wind, remembers the sounds of bones breaking under tyres and screeching rubber. He digs his nails into his skin deeper, hoping for blood, aching for something more than just the voices, the guilt, the shame, and then - 

_ Max. _

His eyes snap wide and frantic, and he jerks violently in the sand, twists until his knee and brace grind from the way he searches for the voice again. His arms sting and bleed from skin rubbed raw and flayed by sand and stones, and the pulsing, thrumming hurt boils inside his head with the ringing just behind his right ear. 

_ Max _

**_Max_ **

**_MAX_ **

_ Where are you, Pa? _

It’s Glory, but not - it’s Sprog, and not.  It is a child, a baby, a toddler; a stillborn blue and fragile and wrapped in the cord of life. It is Jess and Angharad and Furiosa and not. 

_ Come back, Pa! _

_ We’re waiting! _

_ We’re waiting.  _

_ Come back.  _

He lunges into the driver’s seat and nearly loses his leg from the slam of the door. He drives, and drives, and drives, until he can taste nothing but salt and ash on his tongue.

\----

She is a practical woman. A realist. 

She did not expect him to stay, and when Furiosa had woken from the long slumber that came with the birth, she was not quite as surprised when the Sisters had come to her with grim and guilty faces. “Did he at least take supplies,” she had asked them, but they had only been interested in offering her kind words or vicious vows of evisceration on her behalf.

Furiosa had simply pushed herself upright and nursed her son. 

“He’ll be back,” she tells them, face smooth and almost frighteningly calm. “It could be hours, or days, or years. He’ll come back when he’s ready.”

Toast curls her lip sourly at her. “I’m not promising you that he’ll make it through the gates.”

“Should’ve cut his stupid shlanger off when we had the chance,” Dag says bitterly. “That’s all men are good for.”

“He was scared,” Capable says. “You could see it in his eyes; he was afraid of it.”

Toast snorts. “What’s he got to be afraid of? He’s Feral, is what. He’s not meant for staying.” She is draped in Imperator garb; she keeps her guns slung low on her hips, or strapped to her back now, and Furiosa knows that there would only be a fraction of a moment between Max and a bullet if Toast sees him first. 

“Maybe he just needs time,” Cheedo offers; Lily sits in her lap, twining strips of cloth together idly as she watches Furiosa nurse the baby. “Babies are hard.”

“Life is hard,” Toast drawls. “You want a shiny chrome medal for that?”

Furiosa sighs, but she says nothing as she peers into her son’s face while he nurses from her. It’s still such a peculiar sensation; a small, insistent mouth suckling and pulling and drawing milk from her breast. She can’t imagine what it was like for Milk Mothers.

“You don’t have a name yet, do you?” she murmurs to him, and the baby stirs at her voice, its pale brows arching in recognition. She has seen the same look of bewildered searching many times before. 

She is a practical woman; a realist. It doesn’t stop the hollowing, reverberating ache in her chest. 


	8. travel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> writing is hard

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i forget how to write and it's horrible

\-----

He wanders the Wastelands in every direction but hers. 

Drives West, then North, then South - skulks in the shadows of the pillars of red earth and stone and lets the ghosts in his head fester. He sleeps with one arm slung over his face, as if covering his eyes could keep the whispering voices from cutting into him. The traders he meets speak of the new Son of the Imperator; whispers of Joe lived over again, and Max tries to keep himself from wringing his hands around scrawny necks. 

“They say he’s a full life though,” they say. “Son of her mad man. That road warrior.”

“Road warrior? I hear he’s more of a wasteland ghost now; comes and goes as he pleases, like sand in the storm.”

He leaves again, and goes as far as he dares to. 

\------

“He’s been gone thirty days.”

Furiosa swallows a sigh. “I’m aware,” she says calmly, unravelling the cloth around her son’s waist for a much-needed changing. At thirty days old, the baby is growing, healthier than she’d thought - stronger and bigger than she’d imagined. He burbles and kicks and makes a small, displeased moue at the cool water against his skin, and Furiosa smiles quietly down at him, whispers cooing mother-sounds at him until he calms. 

“He should’ve never left.”

She sighs. “There’s no point talking about this,” she says, half-arm pinning her son gently to the work table as she reaches for a new cloth, the moss and soft cream Dag had made from aloe for the baby. “He’s gone; he always goes. Whether or not he comes back is entirely up to him.”

“He put a baby inside you and ran,” Toast snaps, her eyes hard on Furiosa’s face; surely she didn’t expect them to forgive Max for this. “He comes and goes whenever he pleases and he wrecks things and he doesn’t even care about his son.”

“He’ll come back.” She doesn’t know how many times she’s had to repeat it to the Sisters. A part of her understands - sympathizes, even. This is one of the most unforgivable act of betrayal to them; she had welcomed him, gave him food and water and spared her bed and body to him, and when he had taken his fill of her - he’d left. The Vuvalini were used to wandering bed partners. They knew how to raise their children without the corruption of men. 

Toast scowls, arms folded as Furiosa lifts the baby off the table, newly clean and fresh, and offers her breast to him. “My scouts say they’ve seen his car roaming the trades in the South.” She trails after Furiosa as the taller woman moves to her bed, sitting cross-legged as the baby suckles and burbles greedily. “He’s wandering aimlessly out there.”

“So let him wander. The Vuvalini raise their children without fathers,” Furiosa says. The steel and glass chime on her window dances in the breeze, the hot air wafting up through bursts of cool as the clouds shift across the sky. She looks down at the baby; his soft, tufting hair the color of wet sand and eyes an ever-changing shade of green. 

Toast huffs, pacing the space of the room. “Well, in the meantime, I’ve got scouts running routes from the West all through to the South. They’ve got special orders to keep an eye out for him, just to make sure he’s keeping himself alive.” She looks at Furiosa. “Told them that it would be a great service to you, looking after your Fool.”

Furiosa’s mouth twists wryly. “Thanks.”

“Someone’s gotta look out for that idiot,” Toast shakes her head, eyes soft now as she watches Furiosa detach the baby from her breast, the contented look on the baby’s face as he belches. 

“For someone so little, he sure eats like a beast,” Furiosa sighs, rubbing her chest as she lays the baby down to wrap her top back into place. The baby kicks; thick rolls of fat layering his thighs, and Furiosa almost wants to laugh. He’s so  _ big _ . “Where did you get all that fat from, hmm? How’d you get so chubby?”

He curls his limbs in, staring at his mother with a perplexed frown that makes Furiosa’s chest clench before promptly drifting off to sleep. She stares at his sleeping face for a moment, a shadow of a look ghosting her features that Toast can’t quite place, before she lifts him into her arms, tucking him carefully into his sling before she reaches for her prosthetic. 

Toast watches her strap the arm on, metal fingers flexing as she moves to the work bench again to grab her toolbox. The baby dozes easily against her back, and Furiosa blows out a breath as she turns back to Toast. 

“The new Rig needs some fine tuning,” she says. “We should take a look at that before the next trade run.”

\----------

He travels the wastelands for another thirty days; sixty seven in total, with each day etched into the back of his hand as he drives the Interceptor across sand and dust and sleeps beneath the stars that are clouded by the blood of his ghosts. The silence fuzzes in his brain like radio static, more voices than silence - more chaos than peace. 

When he sleeps, he dreams of Jessie, of Sprog, of Toecutter and Joe melded into one; he dreams of bloodshed and roaring engines, the screams of Jessie and Sprog, the howl of Furiosa as wheels crush bones and steel cuts through skin. He sees Jessie, Sprog, Furiosa, their son - all at once, standing on quicksand, sinking, sinking, sinking, down to their knees as the Gigahorse rages over them to the sound of burning sand. 

“Oi, wastelander!”

He jerks awake with his fists clenched to fight and his eyes searching the plains, heaving as he staggers up to his feet and watches the ancient-looking man watch him from astride a sand-blasted bike. He growls a warning, but the other man points East. 

“There’s a storm coming, mate. You’d best get some proper shelter between the rocks before it blows through.” 

Max jerks his head in the direction he points; gathering clouds, dark and rumbling with a promise of madness. Flashes of sand and lightning and white-washed boys flit through his mind, and he shakes them from his mind, shoves his pack into the Interceptor. 

“Don’t run too hard, boy.” 

Max freezes, blinks hard to wash away the flashes of sand and blood from his mind. “Sooner or later, it’ll catch up. Let it come, and let it go.”

He drives West, and he keeps driving. 

There’s a scout patrol waiting when he circles the Citadel. Shouts and rushes of bodies asking of him -  _ mad man, mad man, we’ve been waiting for days. Lookin’ after you for Furiosa, makin’ sure you weren’t dead _ . He’s accosted by a tall, gangly War Boy, grasping his shoulders and shaking him with an amiably crow of  _ Imperator! Imperator! The mad man’s back! _

He turns, anxious, eager, terrified of seeing the statuesque figure; the bundle on her arm as the last he saw her. Instead, he hears the sharp, quick steps of boots against the sand, and then a fist slamming into his face. 

He stumbles, and as he’s spitting blood on the ground, he sees Toast pull back for another hit. He lets it connect, and he lets the next five connect too, until he realizes that it probably isn’t a good thing to be concussed at this point, and he catches her fist on the next swing, holds her carefully. 

“You should never have left!” she hisses at him, shoving at his chest hard. When she staggers up, she’s breathing hard, chest puffing heavily as she quells angry, hot tears that pool in her eyes. Her teeth are bared in a snarling grimace, and Max feels a deep cut of shame in his gut. She looks so young, so lost, so filled with hate for him. “You’re just as bad as all the other men!”

He winces like a battered dog, rubbing the blood from where it has matted against his hair before offering his palms upturned to her. “I know,” he says lowly, eyes staring at the blood dripping onto the ground. “I know.”

“You hurt her.”

“Yes.”

“You hurt  _ us _ .”

“I did.” He swallows the lump in his throat, tastes the sand and rust and wishes he could bleed more. “I - I always hurt. Others. Not, mm, good. At this.” He gestures between them. “Staying.”

Toast glares at him witheringly still, her posse of War Boys shuffling about uncertainly around them. “I should shoot you,” she says coldly. “I should let my boys drive you into the ground.”

He jerks his head, a flinch or a habit, he’s not sure, and he stares at the ground still. “Deserve everything you throw at me.” He braces himself when she moves again, but when he looks up, she’s holding out a canteen. Warily, he takes it, relishes the weight of water in his hands before tasting it on his tongue gratefully. 

“The baby’s still alive,” she tells him. “If you care.”

Max exhales raggedly, fingers clenching around the canteen. “Yes,” he croaks. “I care.” His eyes search Toast’s face; “can I - Furiosa?”

Her eyes narrow at him slightly, and she slings her gun higher on her shoulder. “She’s gone for a trade run.” She turns on her heels. “Come on. The storm’s rolling in.”


	9. storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the storm rages on

\-----

The storm comes without mercy. Snarling thunder and whips of lightning that lick across the ochre sky as winds howl and snap with fistfuls of sand. It moves the desert like a dead creature on livewire; swaying, jerking, casting dead limbs into the electrified air. Max watches the storm through the windows of the kitchen, slouched over the table as he chews through lush, plump tomatoes and dense, dark bread. The flavors roil in his stomach, too rich, too bright, too fresh - he manages two tomatoes, and leaves the rest.

Toast sits astride the bench, watching him from across the table. “You should keep those,” she says, glancing off to where the sky flashes grey and red. “For when you leave again.”

He ducks his head, hands cupped around his clay mug of water. He rubs his thumb over the surface of it, stares into the rippling pool of water before he licks his lips, tilts his head. “Where -” he clears his throat, tastes blood and sand in his chest. “Where is...the baby?”

“With Furiosa,” Toast says simply.

He stares at her. “But - you said -”

“She takes him with her sometimes.” Toast shrugs, fiddles idly with the green stalk of the tomato bunch. “On trade runs, or patrols. He likes the way the Rig moves. Puts him to sleep.”

He swallows a bitter pool on his tongue and glances out the window where the storm rages still. “‘s not safe,” he mumbles, struggling to quell the fear and bewilderment. It makes sense, realistically. He’s too young to be left without his mother, but then again, Furiosa is too fresh from birth to be doing this, too. “She shouldn’t be -”

Toast looks at him sharply. “Shouldn’t be what? Out there? Doing what she always does, just because she pushed out your spawn?” she snaps, mouth curling as he shifts in his seat indignantly. “She’s a big girl. She doesn’t need your approval.”

“‘s too early for her,” he mumbles, a slight growl to his words as he pushes off the table slowly. “Before. Mothers stayed home - rested. With the baby. At least three months.” Jessie’s mother had even helped with the baby; months of homecooked meals and careful lessons of how to hold Sprog and what to do when he cried. 

Who taught Furiosa? She had no mother to teach her; no homecooked meal passed down through generations of women swearing of ethereal healing properties. 

Toast scoffs. “Well, here in the Citadel, we do things our way. We’re not weak.”

He says nothing back, only moves up through the mountain to the familiar hallways of Furiosa’s room. Down the way, he bumps into Dag and Cheedo; Lily pressed to her hip as waif-like as her mother. Almost as soon as he was within sight, though, Dag burst into a hiss, lunging at him with fingers curled into claws. He only barely lunges aside before her nails sink into the flap of his pants.

“Smeg!” she shouts, wrestling against Cheedo’s restricting hold. “Useless prick! Should’ve cut your shlanger off! Ought to string you up by your little balls and skin you! Put you in the sand and let the Wretched tear you to bits layer by layer!”

“Dag, please!” Cheedo cries, hauling her backwards with some effort. Lily presses to her still, whimpering quietly into her hip. “Not in front of Lily!”

“He did it to her! He put it in her and he ran!”

Max presses himself to the wall, heart pounding in his chest as the barrage of voices return -  _ you did this to us, Max! You let us die! You did it! You ruined it!  _ He shakes his head hard, squeezes his eyes shut tight until he sees the blackness around them, and lurches forward to the Furiosa’s room. He collapses into her room, panting and heaving against the ragged worn rug adorning the middle of her bedroom, nails sinking into his palms. 

The windchimes jingle too sharp in the wind, and he scratches at his ears until the sound is a dull throb. His eyes scan the room desperately, searching for something, anything - the bed. He crawls to it, clambers onto the creaking bed frame and presses his face into the cool pillows, panting ragged through his open mouth as he breathes in the scent of Furiosa in them. He fists them in his hands and rocks them almost dazedly, arms cradling the pillow against him as he would a child. 

Outside, the storm rages on.

\--------

The hours pass in maddening uncertainty; it’s nearly sundown when he hears the shouts and cheers and the grinding of heavy wheels and steel. He rushes to the window and sees - yes, the new War Rig, covered in sand, gritty, but in one piece. From this height, he can’t quite see through the crowds, the flurry of bodies moving around the Rig, dismantling things and unhooking cargo. The lift is lowering down to them, and Max squints harder, tries to get his eyes to focus on something more - anything more. 

But the dry air hurts his eyes, and the sand bites hard at his skin, and Max retreats back away from the window with a frustrated sigh. He returns to the workbench where he’d laid out her guns, oiling and cleaning them carefully just to give himself something to do. 

He tucks away a small bundle of something by the baby’s hanging cradle, slipping it carefully onto his pillow. 

There’s a commotion somewhere down the hall, but Max keeps himself straddling the bench, tense and waiting as he hears the door creaking open slowly. 

He blinks.

“Hello, Max.”

Capable moves calmly through the room, lowering the tray of food and water on Furiosa’s desk. The redhead - he hasn’t seen her since the birth, and his mind doesn’t have enough to remember to say whether or not she has changed. She has brought fruit and bread, together with a steaming bowl of some sort of broth. 

His stomach clenches tight. The very thought of food makes him nauseous. 

“I heard from Toast that you’d finally come around to showing your face again.” She perches herself carefully on the edge of the desk, watching him with smooth, calm features as he fidgets with a gun and a cleaning brush. 

“Mm.” He bobs his head, easing his shaking fingers between the crevices of the gun. “You can, mm - punch me too. ‘f you want.”

Capable’s brow arches at him, and he shrugs. “Toast or Dag?”

“Toast,” he says. “Dag tried.”

She hums. “You’re lucky Cheedo still thinks the world of you,” she tells him, pushing off the desk and moving easily to the cradle. It sways gently in the breeze, taut, twine rope keeping it in place through the hooks mounted on the ceiling, and her delicate hands brush over the side, peering into the cradle curiously. 

Her face softens somewhat, and she looks at Max again. “She’ll be up soon,” she says. “You should come down to the infirmary later and let Madera check on you. Won’t do to have you getting sick if you’re going to be anywhere near the baby.”

He shifts at the mention, stuttering over his words as he speaks. “Ah, the uh - baby. He...no one says his name. What is - that. His name. Mm.”

Capable smiles at him gently. “You’ll have to ask Furiosa.”

\-------

By the time Furiosa appears in the doorway of her bedroom, he’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, tinkering with the rickety old leg of the bedframe that sits a half-inch shorter than the rest. He stills at the sound of her boots heavy at the doorway, and turns to her, staring wordlessly at the sight of her. She’s dusted in a fine layer of red sand and grease, smeared over her cheeks and forehead again - this time to keep the glare of the sun when driving, he knows. The bundle of cloth strapped to her chest is pristine, though, white and clean with only the faintest smears of where her flesh hand had cradled it against her chest. 

He swallows, and stands on shaking feet. 

“H’llo,” he croaks.

Her eyes flash and blink as she brushes sand from her hair, shutting the door behind her. The bundle on her chest gurgles and squirms, and he shifts from foot to foot as she pats the baby gently, her eyes warm and soft on his face. 

“Hi,” she says, and the sound of her voice throws him. He shuffles in place, moves hesitantly to the desk and grabs the jug of water. He watches, shaking as she unravels the sling from her body, and reveals a rather chubby, wriggly infant. 

“W-water.” He holds it out to her, at a loss. “For - mm.”

Furiosa’s mouth curves affectionately, and she brushes the faint sprinkling of sand from her son’s hair before moving to the bed. “Come here,” she says, and Max moves helplessly, hovers awkwardly by the bed as she lays the baby down in the middle, its wide eyes staring at him curiously. She turns to him then, hand outstretched, and he flinches readily, is startled when he feels her fingers curl into the hair at the nape of his neck and then she is tilting her forehead up to his.

They linger together for a long moment, breathing, feeling, grounding, and then she pulls back, looks at the baby again. 

“Max,” she murmurs. “This is Rebel.”


End file.
